Kosher poultry, such as chickens, are typically prepared using an assembly line approach. In various conventional approaches, after the poultry are slaughtered, they are shackled onto trolleys by their legs and hung from a conveyor line so that they can move throughout the plant for processing. Processing includes, but is not limited to, bleeding, washing, trimming, and cleaning.
Most of the process is automated and performed by machine. For example, after chickens are bled and washed, they are passed through a plucking machine. The shackled chickens are carried through the plucking machine via the conveyor line. Upon their exit, they are stripped of most, if not all, of their feathers.
Some processing requires human workers to process the chickens while the chickens move along the assembly line. Employees sit or stand on each side of the line and handle and process the chickens as they pass. For example, the wing tips of chickens are cut off by workers located along the assembly line using clippers.
The areas of the assembly line requiring human intervention to physically process the chickens are the most costly and volume limiting. In kosher processing, chickens are covered inside and out with kosher salt. Historically, this salting is performed by hand. This requires workers to salt the body cavities, neck skin and exterior of each chicken on the line. This hand processing is laborious, time consuming, and inefficient. Furthermore, it is wasteful of salt.